Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,17

atop a sleek black horse, wearing a crimson cloak he didn’t leave his father’s house with. There’s not a scratch on him.

I turn my eyes Heavenward and silently thank Saint Elen and any other saint listening. Then I head across the yard to greet him — and see the girl.

She’s older than me, likely a few summers older than Owain. Her honey-colored plait twists like a gallows rope over her shoulder, and she’s wearing a bloodstained cloak cinched over a nightgown. Two little boys hunch at her side. One looks about six summers, the other mayhap three. The older boy glares mutinously while the younger looks ready to collapse.

I stop where I stand and turn openmouthed to Owain as he swings down from his horse. He grabs me at the waist and kisses me firm and fierce. He’s cold from the wind, and his leather armor jabs me shoulder to hips.

Owain is talking, big and grinning and boastful. Normans running like frightened dogs. How they fell like ripe barley beneath his warband’s blades. How everything burned so beautifully.

I can hardly draw breath. I can’t look away from the girl.

“Gerald of bloody Windsor never saw us coming.” Owain cranes his neck to peer into her face as she stares hard at the ground. “Did he, Nest?”

The girl, Nest, lifts her chin. “That’s because I helped him escape the moment I heard your noise. All you’ve done is mark yourself. So don’t ever stop looking over your shoulder, for my husband will not rest until your lifeless corpse is hanging from a tree for the ravens to feed on.”

Husband. This is Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr. Daughter of the king of a realm several years fallen. Wife of Gerald of Windsor. Standing in the courtyard of Llyssun, barefoot and in her nightgown.

“Oh yes,” Owain taunts, “I’m terribly frightened of a coward whoreson who slid down the shit shaft to avoid facing me like a man.”

They’ll have rattled through her yard. Kicked in her door. Flooded through like blood from a wound. They’ll have smashed the crockery and rifled through linens for hidden coins. Shoved anything valuable into purse or tunic.

Hard to the floor. Cold everywhere.

Nest grits her teeth as she tries to keep the younger boy on his feet. Then a baby begins to fuss, a low weh-weh-weh like the sound that used to wake me in the dim hours of the morning. Nest wearily shifts enough to heave a baby out of a sling beneath her arm and dark thatchy hair Miv I have to push the cradle against the wall I have to save Myfanwy —

But this baby is not Miv. It’s not Miv because I left her behind to burn.

Owain is ordering Nest to take the children inside, but it’s a slurry of sound because Rhael’s shoulder presses against mine but it isn’t, it can’t be, it’s years ago and it’s yesterday and I’m up against the steading wall and already the room is filling with smoke.

“SWEETING? HEY.” A HAND ON MY SHOULDER. NOT rough, but insistent. Owain frowns at me.

“You . . .” I stay standing. Somehow.

“I said, help Nest with Gerald’s brats.” Owain glances with distaste at her as she wriggles the baby — Not Miv — into the older boy’s arms.

Touch them. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap. Not Miv. I left my sister behind.

Nest bends over the littler boy, who is curled like a dead grub at her feet, but the older boy is struggling to keep hold of Not Miv as she strains toward their mother. Nest scrabbles to catch the baby mid-tumble.

The littler boy blinks slow, his thumb wedged firmly in his mouth. In one fist is a ratty square of faded red cloth that he clutches against his chest. Miv would be this big. She’s not, though. I left her to burn. To save my own skin.

I kneel and collect the smaller boy out of the mud. He’s dead weight like a sack of barley when I heft him onto my hip. He drops his head on my shoulder and rubs the cloth against his cheek.

The older boy glares up at me. “Put my brother down or I’ll hurt you.”

“William, hssst!” Nest raps him upside the ear. “Not even this girl, do you hear? Not a word to any of these filthy brutes.”

“Mama —”

“I said hssst. Mama needs to think.” Nest presses a fist to her mouth, blinking, blinking.

“I’ll not harm your brother,” I reply quietly to William, “nor you.